delightful transit

A curated list of delightful FOSS transit APIs, apps, datasets, research, and software

GTFS References

GTFS.org - official documentation site for the General Transit Feed Specification. Includes additional GTFS resources.
Google Transit Developers - additional Google-specific documentation of GTFS.
TransitWiki - community wiki for transit planners.

Community

Places to ask questions and find other community resources.

Online Groups

MobilityData Slack chat
OpenTripPlanner
- OpenTripPlanner User mailing list
- OpenTripPlanner Developers mailing list
OneBusAway
Transit Developers mailing list
Transitous - This is where one of the maintainers (@Pi-Cla) hangs out often.
- #opentransport:matrix.org - General open transport discussion.
- #transitous:matrix.spline.de - Transitous related discussion.

Real Life Groups

Transit Techies NYC - NYC-based in-person/online hybrid meetup for those interested in this repo.
German Open Transport Meetup - You can participate in a biweekly online meetup of the German-speaking open transport community.

Data

Places to access collections of GTFS and other transit and multimodal data

3rd Party GTFS URL Directories

The Mobility Database - JSON and CSV files on GitHub that is a repository of 2000+ mobility datasets across the world. Contains contents of OpenMobilityData/TransitFeeds.com.
Transitland - Community editable list of many transit agency GTFS datasets. Also provides an API to access the data as JSON/GeoJSON and a playground to try out the data.

National Government Datasets

National Transit Database (USA) - Information and statistics on the transit systems of the United States, run by the Federal Transit Administration.
transport.data.gouv (France) - Data platform for the French transport ecosystem.
European long-distance transport operators (EU) (Unofficial) - Unofficial list of available GTFS feeds and NeTEx feeds.

Crowdsourced Transit Data

Citylines.co - A collaborative platform for mapping transit systems, with an emphasis on their historical evolution. The data can be downloaded as GeoJSON or CSV from citylines.co/data.
OpenStreetMap (OSM) - The collaborative platform for mapping the world, including transport, transit, and routing data.
GTFS-Hub - Community tested, probably quality/content enhanced, partially merged or filtered GTFS-feeds of (currently German) transport agencies. Maintained by MITFAHR|DE|ZENTRALE.

Sample GTFS and GTFS Realtime Datasets For Testing

sample-gtfs-feed - An imaginary GTFS data set used for testing.
Transitland GTFS and GTFS Realtime unit tests - For testing the transitland-lib library that handles GTFS and GTFS Realtime parsing and validation for Transitland:
gtfs-realtime-validator unit tests - Some GTFS datasets (zip files) are included and a large number of GTFS RT messages are defined programmatically in Java via the gtfs-realtime-bindings library.
OpenTripPlanner unit tests - Some GTFS datasets are defined for the unit tests (GtfsTest and mmri folder).

Software for Creating APIs

Software that you can set up to provide an API to transit and multimodal data.

GraphHopper Routing Engine Open source routing engine for OpenStreetMap. Use it as Java library or server.
gtfs-server - A web server, written in Rust that uses PostGIS as a backend to serve GTFS data via a HTTP endpoint
hafas-rest-api - Expose a HAFAS endpoint as a REST API.
Linked Connections - An open-source, scalable intermodal route planning engine, which allows clients to execute the route planning algorithm (as opposed to the server). Uses GTFS data.
Mobroute - Mobroute is a general purpose FOSS public transportation router (e.g. trip planner) Go library and CLI that works by directly ingesting timetable (GTFS) data from transit agencies themselves (sourced from the Mobility Database). It can be used to quickly run & test routing requests based on GTFS data on your device (via its CLI) or it can be embedded as a library to add GTFS routing to existing navigation apps.
MOTIS - Multi Objective Travel Information System, written in C++ and Java. Can consume schedule timetables in the GTFS or HAFAS format as well as real time information in the GTFS-RT (and RISML, a propriatary format at Deutsche Bahn) as input data. For pedestrian routing (handled by Per Pedes Routing) and car routing (handled by OSRM) OpenStreetMap data is used.
- Transitous - An instance of MOTIS that uses feeds found by users.
Navitia is the opensource engine behind the Navitia.io live API.
OneBusAway - A Java app that consumes GTFS and GTFS-Realtime (along with other formats) and turns them into an easy to use REST API.
OpenTripPlanner - An open source platform for multi-modal and multi-agency journey planning, as well as returning information about a multi-modal graph (using data sources such as GTFS and OpenStreetMap).
pyBikes - Software powering CityBikes for worldwide bikeshare system info
TransitClock - Java application that can consume raw vehicle positions and generate prediction times in formats such as GTFS-realtime. Formerly known as "Transitime".
TransiCast - Provides public transportation data for North America in a single, integrated call and response format. The data is provided in stream-parsable XML and JSON formats. Open-source on Google Code. Hosted version at www.transitcast.com requires payment.

Agency Tools

Tools for transit agencies. See also GTFS Data Collection and Maintenance Tools for tools specific to GTFS.

AC Transit RestroomFinder - Pinpoints the nearest authorized restroom for bus operator and field staff, using GPS and on-screen map.
AC Transit Training and Education Department (TED) application - This application supports the District's training operations for transportation and maintenance employees, primarily in the positions of Bus Operators and Heavy Duty Coach Mechanics (Apprentice and Journey), although the system supports new courses and apprenticeship programs.
AC Transit Customer Relations application (CusRel) - Public transit ticketing system for customer issues and feedback with: inter-departmental routing with notifications, department/person assigments, simple workflow, ticket searching, pre-canned reports, daily reminders and more.
TransAM - An open-source asset management platform for public transportation agencies. Open-source on Github.
Route Trends (webapp, GitHub) - An R Shiny app to ingest ridership time series, and return seasonal, trend, and residual components according to STL methodology and forecasts including uncertainty based on those components. Sponsored by Metro Transit (Minneapolis-St. Paul).

Hardware

Experimental and production transit hardware.

Bus Tracking GPS - Code for Miami prototype of a cheap open-source solution to track transit buses.
Train departure Display - A replica, near real-time, miniature UK railway station train departure sign based upon a Raspberry Pi Zer0.

Apps

Apps people use when taking transit.

Web Apps

OpenTripPlanner Client GWT - A Google Web Toolkit-based web interface for OpenTripPlanner
OTP-UI React Component Library - React Javascript component library, which can be used to build trip planner webapps. See the Storybook for a demo.
Transitive.js - Creates a customizable web map layer of transit routes using Leaflet or D3.
1-Click - A virtual “trip aggregator” that assembles information on a wide variety of available modes: public transit, private, rail, rideshare, carpool, volunteer, paratransit, and walking and biking. Open-source on GitHub.
Bustime - Public transport real-time monitoring with WebSocket updates. Open-source on GitHub.
Transit Tracker - Realtime vehicle position for Greater Montreal & Toronto, Canada
GTFS Builder - A free web-based application to help you create GTFS files. Maintained by the National Rural Transit Assistance Program (RTAP).
MBTA tile-server - Scripts to create a Docker container that encapsulates all the elements necessary to develop map tiles for use on MBTA.com
Cadê Meu Busão - Realtime tracking transit buses from Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Open-source on GitHub.
Futureco cartes.app - Les développements de 2024 se concentrent sur une nouvelle application Web de cartes généralistes et libres, avec une attention particulière sur les itinéraires pour aider les gens à voyager tout en respectant la planète. An alternative to Google / Apple Maps that also tracks carbon emissions. Github here.

Native Apps

OneBusAway Apps - Android (source code), Fire Phone (source code), iOS (source code), (source code), Alexa skill (source code)
opentripplanner-client-library - A Kotlin Multiplatform library for making API requests and parsing responses from an OpenTripPlanner v2 server for trip plans, bike rental info, and server metadata for Android, iOS, and web.
Transito - FOSS data-provider-agnostic public transportation app that let's you route between locations using openly available public GTFS feeds (sourced from the Mobility Database). Utilizing the Mobroute Go API, the Transito app lets you performs routing calculations right on your phone. Cross-platform app currently supporting Android & Linux.
Transportr An Android app that uses public-transport-enabler in order to connect to many different transport networks worldwide.
Offi Directions - An Android app that provides trip planning, schedules, live departure times, and disruption information for transport authorities in Europe and beyond.
KDE Itinerary - A cross-platform trip planning app that can locally extract ticket and reservation data directly from emails without compromising privacy.
MACS Transit Android App - A bus tracker app for Android devices for the MACS Transit system in Fairbanks, Alaska. Uses RouteMatch APIs.

Visualizations

GTFS Based Visualizations

All Transit - Interactive GTFS route and schedule animation (for U.S. cities) using Mapbox GL JS, Deck.gl and Transitland. Github repository here.
fastest-bus-analysis-in-the-west - A python Pandas script that combines Ridership/APC, Swiftly speed and dwell data, bus stop inventory, GTFS, and geospatial shapes to create a stop by stop, route by route, time grouping filterable dataset for cross-analyses. The dataset is then visualized in Tableau to help VTA Planners find places to make bus and rail network faster and more reliable through speedups methods like stop consolidation and dedicated lanes.
Mapnificent - Shows areas you can reach with public transport in a given time. Open-source on GitHub, live at https://www.mapnificent.net/.
MOTIS - Intermodal Mobility Information System including visualization
MTA Frequency - Frequency visualization of subways and buses in New York City built using Transitland.
SEPTA Rail OTP Report - An online on-time performance reporing & drill down tool using GTFS.
Transit Vis - A visualization tool to display performance metrics derived from the King County Metro GTFS-RT feed (OneBusAway API). Viewable here. Used for this paper.
TransitFlow Animate GTFS data around the world using Processing and Transitland.
TRAVIC Transit Visualization Client - Visualizes vehicles moving based on static GTFS data (and sometimes realtime data). Supports over 260 cities. Github account for geOps organization is here.
Visualizing MBTA Data - Interactive graphs that show how people use Boston's subway system.

Transit Map Creation

Brand New Subway - An interactive transportation planning game that lets players alter the NYC subway system to their heart's content.
BENO Metro Mapm Creator - A very old fashioned but classic transit map creator.
Tennessine Metro Designer - A modern and aesthetically pleasing transit map designer.
Metro Map Maker - An open source and simple metro map maker software.
Metro Dreamin - A modern open source sofware that allows users to create, save, like and share and create interactive transit maps with agents.
Rail Map Generators - Tool for generating railway maps and information panels in the styles of various cities' public transportation systems.
MetroSets - A flexible web tool to visualize set systems using the metro map metaphor. Based on this paper

Transit Map Aggregation

UrbanRail.Net - Worldwide reference map of urban rail transport (metros,trams,commuter rail) with detailed and up-to-date information.
OpenRailwayMap - Worldwide map of railways using OpenStreetMap data.
AllRailMap - Another worldwide map of railways using OpenStreetMap data.
Rail Transit Maps - A collection of railway maps covering Europe (especially Russia).
Tramscale - Website outlining maps showing the scales of tram systems around the world.
Timelines - Compare the timelines of Rapid Transit Projects around the world.
Metrolinemap - Interactive Maps of the world's Metro systems.
Metrocyclopaedia - 3d maps of metro systems across the world (uses data from Metrolinemap).
RailFansCanada - Interactive System Map detailing the present and future of different urban rail systems in Canada.
Intercity Rail map - Map of the real time location and schedule information for Amtrak and Via trains
Indian Railways Map - Interactive Maps of the Indian Main rail network.
Railway Stations - Photos of Railway Stations across the world.
Transit Maps - Critiques and reviews of the design of transit maps from across the world.
Transit Explorer - A map containing fixed-guideway transit around the world.
Britsh Railways - An interactive map of Great Britain's rail network.
TransitLand Map - Worldwide map of transit services (which have a GTFS Feed).
DB InfraGO - Interactive Map of German Rail infrastructure.
SNCF Carte interactive - Interactive Map of French Rail infrastructure.
JR pass - Interactive Map of Mainline Rail in Japan.
Belgian Train Map - The Train Map shows realtime information about SNCB trains on the network such as their position on a map of Belgium.

GTFS

GTFS Libraries

Software that makes it easy to consume GTFS data in a variety of languages.

C++

just_gtfs - C++17 header-only library for reading and writing GTFS (used in Valhalla). Main features: fast reading and writing of GTFS feeds, support for extended GTFS route types, simple working with GTFS Date and Time formats.

C#

GTFS Feed Parser - .Net/Mono implementation of a GTFS parser.

Go

Go GTFS Parser - A GTFS parsing library for Go.

Java

OneBusAway GTFS Modules - A Java-based library for reading, writing, and transforming public transit data in the GTFS format, including database support.

JavaScript

gtfs-utils - Utilities to process GTFS data sets (e.g., "flattening" calendar.txt & calendar_dates.txt, computing arrival/departure times of trips).
gtfs-via-postgres - Yet another tool to process GTFS using PostgreSQL.
Node-GTFS - Loads transit data from GTFS files, unzips it and stores it to a SQLite database. Provides some methods to query for agencies, routes, stops and times.

PostgreSQL

gtfs-via-postgres - Yet another tool to process GTFS using PostgreSQL.

Python

gtfsdb - Python library for converting GTFS files into a relational database.
gtfs_functions - Python package with useful functions to create geo-spatial visualizations from GTFS feeds.
gtfs-segments - Python package that represents GTFS data for buses in a concise tabular manner using segments.
GTFS Kit - A Python 3.8+ tool kit for analyzing General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) data. Supersedes GTFSTK.
Make GTFS - A Python library to make GTFS feeds from basic route information.
Mapzen GTFS - A Python GTFS library that supports reading individual GTFS tables, or constructing a graph to represent each agency in a feed.
multigtfs - A Django application to import and export GTFS.
partridge - A fast, forgiving Python GTFS reader built on pandas DataFrames.
transit_service_analyst - A Python library to support transit service analysis.

R

r-transit - Collection of tools for GTFS in R. See Github here: https://github.com/r-transit
gtfsio - Fast and flexible functions to read and write GTFS in R.

GTFS Converters

Converters from various static schedule formats to and from GTFS.

extract-gtfs-pathways - Command-line tool to extract pathways as GeoJSON from a GTFS dataset.
extract-gtfs-shapes Command-line tool to extract shapes as GeoJSON from a GTFS dataset.
GTFS-OSM-Sync - A Java tool for synchronizing data in GTFS format with OpenStreetMap.org.
gtfs-to-geojson - Javascript tool that converts transit data in GTFS shapes and stops into geoJSON. This is useful for creating maps of transit routes.
NeTEx-to-GTFS Converter Java - Converts NeTEX datasets into GTFS datasets. The input NeTEx datasets are required to follow the Nordic NeTEx Profile.
transit_model - A Rust library to convert to/from the following formats: GTFS, NTFS (for Navitia, see Software for Creating APIs), TransXChange (UK standard format), KV1 (Netherland standard format) or NeTEx (European standard format).
UK2GTFS - R package that converts UK format TransXchange (bus, metro, tram, ferry) and CIF (rail) timetables to GTFS.

GTFS Data Collection and Maintenance Tools

gtfs-blocks-to-transfers - A Python tool to convert GTFS blocks, defined by setting trip.block_id into a series of trip-to-trip transfers (proposal).
GTFS Display - Analyse, monitor and maintain GTFS data (Example instances).
IBI Data Tools - A web application that handles GTFS editing, validating, quality checking, and deploying to OpenTripPlanner. (Combines and builds upon the functionality of the deprecated Gtfs Data Manager and GTFS Editor.)
pfaedle - Precise map-matching for GTFS using OpenStreetMap data

GTFS Merge Tools

combine_gtfs_feeds - A Python tool to combine multiple gtfs feeds into one feed/dataset.
GTFS Kit - A Python 3.8+ tool kit for analyzing and merging General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) data. Info on how to aggregate and clean feeds provided here.
gtfsmerge - A Python Script to merge GTFS ZIP archives into one.

GTFS Analysis Tools

GTFS Kit - A Python 3.6+ tool kit for analyzing General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) data. Supersedes GTFSTK.
gtfstools - A set of convenient tools for editing and analysing transit feeds in GTFS format in R.
transit_service_analyst - A Python library to support transit service analysis.
R5: Rapid Realistic Routing on Real-world and Reimagined networks - A Java-based routing engine developed by Conveyal for multimodal (transit/bike/walk/car) networks. It currently plans many trips over a time window for scenario planning and analytics purposes. A related R wrapper package (r5r) is developed independently by IPEA. See also the performance comparison from Higgins et al. (2022), linked below.
tidytransit - An R package to read GTFS data into tibbles and simple features dataframes to map transit stops and routes, calculate travel times and transit frequencies, and validate transit feeds.
GTFS-to-Chart - Creates stringline charts showing all vehicles on a transit route from GTFS data.
GTFS Display - Analyse, monitor and maintain GTFS data (Example instances).
PTNA - Public Transit Nework Analysis is a open source system for finding and aggregating information about public transportation lines mapped in OSM.

GTFS Timetable Publishing Tools

GTFS-to-HTML - Generate human-readable timetables in HTML or PDF format directly from GTFS.
Timetable Kit - An open source Python 3.10 module and scripts depending on GTFS Kit, designed to create complex printed/PDF timetables with flexible layouts. Currently only working out of the box for Amtrak's GTFS, but under active development.

GTFS Validators

Conveyal's gtfs-lib - Conveyal's successor to their own gtfs-validator, a Java-based library for loading and saving GTFS feeds of arbitrary size with disk-backed storage.
gtfstidy - A Go-based tool to tidy and validate GTFS feeds.
gtfs-validator-api - This Python package is a thin wrapper around MobilityData/gtfs-validator that handles intermediate files produced and finds gtfs-validator's output file so it can be given a specific name or returned as a string.
GTFSVTOR - An open-source GTFS validator implemented in Java licensed under GPLv3 maintained by Mecatran.
MobilityData's gtfs-validator - A open-source GTFS validator canonically following the GTFS spec implemented in Java licensed under Apache v2.0 maintained by MobilityData.
Reflect GTFS Validator (hosted by Foursquare ITP) - Transit schedule and GTFS validation platform by Foursquare ITP that includes a free, web-based GTFS validator based on gtfs-lib.
Transport Validator - An open-source validator implemented in Rust. Used by the French National Access Point.

GTFS Realtime

GTFS-realtime documentation. Also available in Español.

GTFS Realtime Libraries

gtfs-realtime-bindings - The official bindings for Java, .NET, Node.js, Python, and Ruby generated from the official GTFS-realtime protocol buffer specification.

GTFS Realtime Validators

gtfs-realtime-validator - A GTFS Realtime validation tool originally developed by the Center for Urban Transportation Research at the University of South Florida and now maintained by MobilityData.

GTFS Realtime Convertors

GTFS-realtime VehiclePositions to GTFS-realtime TripUpdates (TransitClock) - Java application that can consume raw vehicle positions and generate prediction times in formats such as GTFS-realtime. Formerly known as "Transitime".
gtfs-realtime-translators - A Python-based tool to translate custom arrival API formats to GTFS-realtime. As of July 2019 it supports LA Metro and SEPTA.
hafas-gtfs-rt-feed - A Javascript tool to generate a GTFS Realtime feed from a HAFAS endpoint.

GTFS Realtime Utilities

Concentrate - Combines realtime transit information from multiple sources into single output files. Maintained by Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA).
gtfs-rt-dump - Converts protocol buffer format to plain text for easy viewing of a GTFS-realtime feed in plain text (for debugging purposes)
gtfs-rt-inspector - Web app to inspect & analyze any (CORS-enabled) GTFS Realtime feed. Open-source on GitHub.
print-gtfs-rt-cli - Javascript tool to read a GTFS Realtime feed from stdin, print human-readable or as JSON.
transitcast - Uses GTFS and GTFS-RT vehicle position feed generating an estimated transition time it takes for each vehicle to move from scheduled stop to scheduled stop recording these an "observed_stop_time" table. These records can later be used to train a machine learning model to make vehicle travel predictions. Created by TriMet as part of an FTA IMI project.
GTFS Realtime Display - Analyse, monitor and maintain GTFS Realtime data. Example instances

SIRI

SIRI API - Java classes generated from the v1.0 and v1.3 SIRI schemas.
SIRI 2.0 API - Java classes generated from the v2.0 SIRI schemas.
SIRI to GTFS-realtime - A Java-based command-line utility to convert from the SIRI format to GTFS-realtime.
SIRI 2.0 Autodoc - Automatically generated documentation from the (incredibly well) annotated SIRI 2.0 Schema Definition.
King County Metro Legacy AVL to SIRI - Java-based tool to convert King County Metro's Legacy AVL format to SIRI.
SIRI REST Client - An open-source Android library for interacting with the RESTful SIRI interface for real-time transit data, such as that currently being used by the MTA Bus Time API.
SIRI 1.3 POJOs (Android-compatible) - Android-compatible Plain Old Java Objects (POJOSs) used for data binding (deserliazing XML/JSON) responses for SIRI v1.3 APIs. Used by the SIRI REST Client.
pysiri2validator - Simple validator for SIRI 2.0 written in Python 3.
Edwig - A golang server for real-time public transport data exchange, using the SIRI protocol.

Other Multimodal Data Formats

Alliance for Parking Data Standards (APDS) - Formed by the International Parking Institute (IPI), the British Parking Association (BPA), and the European Parking Association (EPA), APDS is a not-for-profit organization with the mission to develop, promote, manage, and maintain a uniform global standard that will allow organizations to share parking data across platforms worldwide. APDS Version 1.0 documents are here.
CurbLR - A specification for curb regulations.
Dyno-Demand - A GTFS-based travel demand data format focusing on individual passenger demand suitable for dynamic network modeling developed by San Francisco County Transportation Authority, LMZ LLC, and UrbanLabs LLC.
General Bikeshare Feed Specification (GBFS) - Open data standard for real-time bikeshare information developed by members of the North American Bikeshare Association (NABSA).
- gbfs-validator - 3rd party tool to validate GBFS feeds.
- gbfs R package - Functions to interface with GBFS feeds in R, allowing users to save and accumulate tidy .rds datasets for specified cities/bikeshare programs.
- GBFS Documentation Platform - Documentation platform for the General Bikeshare Feed Specification, maintaned by MobilityData. View the GBFS specification, change proposals, policy guides, and technical tools.
GTFS-flex - A data format that models flexible public transportation services as an extension to GTFS.
GTFS-ride - An open, fixed-route transit ridership data standard developed through a partnership between the Oregon Department of Transportation and Oregon State University.
General Modeling Network Specification (GMNS) - A format for sharing routable road network files designed to be used in multi-modal static and dynamic transportation planning and operations models. Volpe/FHWA partnership with Zephyr Foundation.
Managed and Tolled Lanes Feed Specification (MTLFS) - Proposal for a schema that comprise the Managed and Tolled Lanes Tolling Feed Specification (MTLFS) and defines the fields used in all of those files developed by Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority.
Mobility Data Specification (MDS) - A format to implement realtime data sharing, measurement and regulation for municipalities and mobility as a service providers. It is meant to ensure that governments have the ability to enforce, evaluate and manage providers. Maintained by the Open Mobility Foundation.
NCHRP 08-119 Developing Data Standards and Guidance for Transportation Planning and Traffic Operations - Completed - The objective of this research is to develop standards and/or guidance to be used and adopted by the transportation community in collecting, managing, and sharing static and real-time data for transportation planning and operations.
NeTex - A general purpose XML format designed for the exchange of complex static transport data among distributed systems managed by the CEN standards process.
OMX: The Open Matrix data file format - A structured collection of two-dimensional array objects and associated metadata, for possible use in the transportation modeling industry.
Open Sales and Distribution Model (OSDM) - Aims to substantially simplify the booking process for customers of rail trips and to lower complexity and distribution costs for distributors and railway carriers. Contains a specification of an offline model and on-line API. Maintained by the International Union of Railways (UIC).
shared-row - A specification for right-of-way (ROW) for a SharedStreets Reference.
TCRP G-16 Development of Transactional Data Specifications for Demand-Responsive Transportation (Final) - The objective of this research is to develop technical specifications for transactional data for entities involved in the provision of demand-responsive transportation. Expected completion date is late 2018.
TIDES project - Transit ITS Data Exchange Specification (TIDES) is a proposed effort to create standard data structures, APIs, and data management tools for historical transit ITS data including AVL, APC and AFC Data.
Cal-ITP Operational Data Standard (ODS) - Intended to address the lack of a standard format for representing transit schedules used by drivers, dispatchers, and planners to carry out transit operations.
Transport Operator Mobility-as-a-service Provider (TOMP)-API - Working group in the Netherlands with a goal to develop an API for use by Transport Operators and Mobility-as-a-service Providers for operator discovery, trip planning, end user interaction, booking, and payment.

Blog Posts

"Legacy AVL system? It's okay, join the club." by Kurt Raschke - Discussion of options for transforming legacy AVL system data into the GTFS-realtime format.
"GTFS Best Practices now available!" by Sean Barbeau - Discusses some of the challenges of an open data format like GTFS and the GTFS Best Practices that were launched in early 2017 to help address data quality.
"What's new in GTFS-realtime v2.0" by Sean Barbeau - Discuss the shortfalls in GTFS-realtime v1.0 and the improvements in v2.0.
"AVL, CAD, and Real-Time Passenger Info for Beginners" by Tony Laidig - Provides a general introduction to technology used to track vehicles.
"Visualizing Better Transportation: Data & Tools" by Steve Pepple - A collection of transportation-related data and tools for the San Francisco Bay Area and other cities in North America, originally collected and discussed at a 2018 Transit Week Event at ARUP in San Francisco.
"How to use GTFS data to track transit vehicles in realtime" by Tom Camp - Using GTFS and GTFS Realtime to provide continuous realtime updates.

Academic Papers

When(ish) is my bus? Data and code - The data and code (R) behind Whenish is my bus? Data includes three days of historical vehicle positions and the survey results.
Tang et al. - "Ridership effects of real-time bus information system: A case study in the City of Chicago" - Experiment in Chicago, IL showed modest increase in ridership when riders had access to real-time info via text message or email.
Kay et al. - "When(ish) is my bus? User-centered Visualizations of Uncertainty in Everyday, Mobile Predictive Systems" - Paper attempts to answr the question of "how do we communicate uncertainty in transit predictions?" Explains the problem, existing solutions and designs a better interface for letting users know when to arrive at the bus stop.
Watkins et al. - "Where Is My Bus? Impact of mobile real-time information on the perceived and actual wait time of transit riders" - Experiments in Seattl,e WA showed that riders perceived shorter bus wait times when they had access to real-time info via mobile apps.
Brakewood et al. - “An experiment evaluating the impacts of real-time transit information on bus riders in Tampa, Florida” - Controlled experiment in Tampa, FL showed that riders with access to real-time info via mobile apps perceived nearly 2 minute reduction in wait times compared to riders without real-time info. Riders with real-time info also had decreases in anxiety and frustration and better reception of agency.
Brakewood et al. - "The impact of real-time information on bus ridership in New York City" - Experiment in NYC showed that ridership increased on long routes when real-time info was made available to riders.
Brakewood and Watkins - "A literature review of the passenger benefits of real-time transit information" (2018) - An overview of many different research studies looking at the benefits of real-time transit information.
Gramacki et al. - "gtfs2vec - Learning GTFS Embeddings for comparing Public Transport Offer in Microregions" - Methology using Uber's H3 spatial index and machine learning to identify areas of "similar" public transit service quality in cities. Source code available on GitHub.
Higgins et al. - "Calculating place-based transit accessibility: Methods, tools and algorithmic dependence" (2022) - Compares software tools for calculating accessibility by walking and public transit including ArcGIS Pro, Emme, R5R, and OpenTripPlanner.
Aemmer et al. - "Measurement and classification of transit delays using GTFS-RT data" - Presents a method for extracting transit performance metrics from a General Transit Feed Specification’s Real-Time (GTFS-RT) component and aggregating them to roadway segments. Used with Transit Vis, viewable here.

Government Reports

APTA Policy Development and Research - Public Transportation Embracing Open Data - APTA's discussion of the benefits and challenges of open transit data (a short summary of the below TCRP report).
TCRP Synthesis 115 - Open Data: Challenges and Opportunities for Transit Agencies (2015) - A comprehensive report looking at the benefits and challenges of open transit data.
TCRP Research Report 213: Data Sharing Guidance for Public Transit Agencies – Now and in the Future (2020) - A report designed to help agencies make decisions about sharing their data, including how to evaluate benefits, costs, and risks.
TCRP G-16 Development of Transactional Data Specifications for Demand-Responsive Transportation (In progress) - The objective of this research is to develop technical specifications for transactional data for entities involved in the provision of demand-responsive transportation. Expected completion date is late 2018.

Community Maintained Lists

Vendors Providing GTFS Creation/Maintenance services - Add new vendors here.
Entities Providing Transportation Software Development Consulting Services - Add new entities here.

Maintainer

If you have questions or feedback regarding this list, then please create an Issue in our tracker, and optionally @mention the maintainer:

@Pi-Cla

Contributors

With delight we thank our delightful contributors (please add yourself if you are missing).

In addition we would also like to thank MobilityData and all of the contributors who contributed to their list who have also released their contributions under CC0-1.0. This list started off as a fork of their list but with the non-FOSS and outdated entries removed after the maintainer of this list was compelled to sign a CLA that required their mailing address and telephone number.

License

To the extent possible under law, the maintainers and other contributors have waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this work.